writers on dancing

December 05, 2012

Learning How

Dance training is much more than physical conditioning and coordination. It’s easy to take the rigor and complexity for granted. Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin edifies and delights her audience by unpeeling the layers in “Untrained,” her 2009 work for four men - two dancers and two regular guys. The movement itself was fairly pedestrian and the non-dancers’ skills were about what you’d expect for untrained dancers. But the piece was engaging and all of the players worth watching, as much for their personalities and their willingness as for precision or choreographic patterns.

The set was open, the costumes workman-like; neither offered any cover for the obvious differences in the skills of the players. Dancers Alisdair Macindoe and Ross McCormack, and civilians Michael Dunbar and Jake Shackleton moved in and out of a simple taped square at the center of the black box space and danced in workout clothes and what looked like their own defining t-shirts (“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” read Dunbar’s.)

The work started simply, each performer first standing at center – each stance a particular “Ecce Homo” -- then parading back and forth across the taped square. They moved from standing to walking to simple dance steps (turns, jumps,) before moving on to real complexity. Macindoe and McCormack started off, their muscles and body lines balanced, symmetrical, and rhythmic. Dunbar and Shackleton followed, in varying shades of normality. Dunbar was soft and lumbering, a gentle bear of a man, who went for each move in the hope of achieving it. Shackleton called up the rear of each sequence; he was unselfconsciously awkward. He often stopped short of even trying to complete a move that was beyond him, instead including some version of the pattern’s ending in sly workarounds, like a flailed arm to approximate the dancers’ elegant closing flourishes.

Midway, the cast paired -- Macindoe with Dunbar, and McCormack with Shackleton – in two duets of mirrored patterns. The untrained dancers led, with their partners following; then they switched roles. The more complex the sequences, the more apparent the quality differences showed in execution. The movement became a kind of competition, as each man added his particular style; the judges were the audience members, who laughed and applauded. Through repeated episodes, the trained dancers leaned more toward comic antics, too, as if to appeal for the audience’s love, since the untrained were more endearing (and more like us.)

In addition to movement, the performers revealed themselves in stories, such as tales of their physical shortcomings and later, about their fathers. As Macindoe described the embarrassment of his psoriasis, the comments shifted our eyes from his dancer’s elegance to the red spots on his arms; Dunbar, as if he were confiding to a friend, described his quiet father’s early death, and what it felt like to hold his hand, even as a teenager. Entirely personalized, each was more than his movement or skill, more than the humorous self-effacement or aggrandizement that laced the evening. They each performed a movie scene and sang; there was a bit of a “Queen for the Day” quality, as the audience raised the cheer levels for their favorites.

As simple as the dance was, there were more things going on than immediately met the eye. On either side of the white taped performance space were a series of unreadable cards, laid out as if text tarot decks. They looked like crib notes for the performers – a sequence of the dance segments starting from that side of the stage. How many times have you wondered how dancers in non-linear, abstract work remember the long, complex patterns of movement they are performing? The cards were a reminder of how much more goes into “training” than the just the substantial challenge of building physical strength and grace.

Guerin, in an interview about the cast changes since 2009, described the transformation of the untrained by performance. She has needed to change casts as the amateurs learned and began to relate differently to audiences; the process of dancing is part of training itself.

At the end of the hour, the four men finally danced together, in a short, simple quartet. Having spent the previous scenes demonstrating their individuality and differences, moving through sequential and occasionally paired movements, now they came together. Each stood in a corner of the square, and moved his arms and upper body in parallel patterns, elbows lifted and arms flapped. Only the two pros kicked their legs, and leaped toward the corners; the untrained comfortably found their more pedestrian equivalents. They had become a troop, a band of brothers through dance; and the untrained will never be quite so innocent again.